Battlefield Hardline represents a daring departure from traditional Battlefield experiences. Developed by Visceral, makers of Dead Space, the game deals with an urban story set against a depressing, near-future metropolitan backdrop. The game follows the exploits of Nicholas Mendoza, a Cuban American Miami detective that fled the despotic regime with his single mother. He is plunged into a war zone backed by reckless police officers, and surrounded by violent warring drug gangs. Nicholas is quickly betrayed, framed for corruption and incarcerated for three years.

The premise, while unoriginal, is compelling and the cut scenes and the character interactions are quite effective. Hardline has a variety of objectives, including infiltration, assassination, arrest, theft and pure run-and-gun game play. The game is also comprised of a variety of thrilling set pieces, with some that truly push the story to frenetic high points. Hardline is bolstered by great voice acting, excellent music and decent sound effects.

Characters demonstrate predominantly good chemistry and charisma. Character notes abound as a protagonist and antagonist argue about simple things like rice and beans. At times, the game feels really authentic with its adherence to its Miami-soaked identity and the Cuban American population. At times however, the game quickly devolves into a flaccid, predictable, propagandist jab at Second Amendment rights and right leaning individuals. This is unfortunate because most of the game story, while unoriginal, is tight and well assembled. Well, up until the point that you're left flailing desperately during a pointlessly unfulfilling cliffhanger ending.

While the graphics are predominantly well presented, Hardline has an annoying habit of slipping to 2009-quality graphics all too frequently. You're just as likely to be wowed by stunning Miami vistas or wonderfully animated character faces, as you are to be repulsed by janky human animations and pathetic vehicle traversal. This flaw could be forgiven if the game ran beautifully but the truth is that the game is extremely unstable and badly packaged. Much like other Battlefield titles, Hardline initiates from a launched browser page which feels positively primitive by today's standards.

Additionally, Hardline crashed for me 2-3 times during the duration of the extremely short 8 hour campaign. Worse still is that many enemies clipped through walls and floors, allowing them to attack me with impunity and immunity, while I could do nothing to respond. Such a common glitch wouldn't be an issue on an easier difficulty, but harder difficulty enemies can drop you in a few shots, resulting in the loss of hours of game play. The biggest technical issues aren't glitch-related however. The largest issues are clearly game play related.

Hardline hangs its hat on the ability to approach missions in a variety of ways, including run-and-gun, sabotage, sniping and stealth. Unfortunately, the game's AI is shockingly obtuse and will often fail to realize that an ally has been killed a scant 3 feet away from you. Worse still, is that in an attempt to ameliorate this issue, Visceral gave the enemies telescopic x-ray vision. Enemies will enter rooms shooting at you as they come in, despite not possibly knowing where you are standing. While AI will miss obvious tampering points in the game, often they'll spot you, in cover, a kilometer away and are all able to hone in on you unfairly. This makes the game in higher difficulties, frustrating at best.

The worst part of all, however, is that the shooting play is compromised. This is both shocking coming from a developer like Visceral and with a title attached to the Battlefield moniker. On dozens of occasions, I'd shoot an enemy in the head with a pistol at a range of 8-20 feet and the enemy would fail to perish. Hitboxes are notoriously unreliable and even center-mass shotgun blasts fail to dispose of t-shirt wearing mooks. Meanwhile, a simple bonk on the head with the butt of your gun is an auto erase on an enemy. This kind of weak, flaccid, unreliable shooting play undermines the biggest draw from Hardline which is action-oriented first person shooting.

That said, despite a nigh-dead multiplayer scene, dearth of mods and DLCs and a brief sub-10 hour campaign, Hardline is still capable of providing a good time, especially at its sale price of $6 USD. That's cheaper than modern movies, most of which suck quite hardily, anyways.

Hardline can offer a few hours of Miami Vice fun for those that are fans of the genre.

Worth a look.

7/10.

Battlefield Hardline represents a daring departure from traditional Battlefield experiences. Developed by Visceral, makers of Dead Space, the game deals with an urban story set against a depressing, near-future metropolitan backdrop. The game follows the exploits of Nicholas Mendoza, a Cuban American Miami detective that fled the despotic regime with his single mother. He is plunged into a war zone backed by reckless police officers, and surrounded by violent warring drug gangs. Nicholas is quickly betrayed, framed for corruption and incarcerated for three years. The premise, while unoriginal, is compelling and the cut scenes and the character interactions are quite effective. Hardline has a variety of objectives, including infiltration, assassination, arrest, theft and pure run-and-gun game play. The game is also comprised of a variety of thrilling set pieces, with some that truly push the story to frenetic high points. Hardline is bolstered by great voice acting, excellent music and decent sound effects. Characters demonstrate predominantly good chemistry and charisma. Character notes abound as a protagonist and antagonist argue about simple things like rice and beans. At times, the game feels really authentic with its adherence to its Miami-soaked identity and the Cuban American population. At times however, the game quickly devolves into a flaccid, predictable, propagandist jab at Second Amendment rights and right leaning individuals. This is unfortunate because most of the game story, while unoriginal, is tight and well assembled. Well, up until the point that you're left flailing desperately during a pointlessly unfulfilling cliffhanger ending. While the graphics are predominantly well presented, Hardline has an annoying habit of slipping to 2009-quality graphics all too frequently. You're just as likely to be wowed by stunning Miami vistas or wonderfully animated character faces, as you are to be repulsed by janky human animations and pathetic vehicle traversal. This flaw could be forgiven if the game ran beautifully but the truth is that the game is extremely unstable and badly packaged. Much like other Battlefield titles, Hardline initiates from a launched browser page which feels positively primitive by today's standards. Additionally, Hardline crashed for me 2-3 times during the duration of the extremely short 8 hour campaign. Worse still is that many enemies clipped through walls and floors, allowing them to attack me with impunity and immunity, while I could do nothing to respond. Such a common glitch wouldn't be an issue on an easier difficulty, but harder difficulty enemies can drop you in a few shots, resulting in the loss of hours of game play. The biggest technical issues aren't glitch-related however. The largest issues are clearly game play related. Hardline hangs its hat on the ability to approach missions in a variety of ways, including run-and-gun, sabotage, sniping and stealth. Unfortunately, the game's AI is shockingly obtuse and will often fail to realize that an ally has been killed a scant 3 feet away from you. Worse still, is that in an attempt to ameliorate this issue, Visceral gave the enemies telescopic x-ray vision. Enemies will enter rooms shooting at you as they come in, despite not possibly knowing where you are standing. While AI will miss obvious tampering points in the game, often they'll spot you, in cover, a kilometer away and are all able to hone in on you unfairly. This makes the game in higher difficulties, frustrating at best. The worst part of all, however, is that the shooting play is compromised. This is both shocking coming from a developer like Visceral and with a title attached to the Battlefield moniker. On dozens of occasions, I'd shoot an enemy in the head with a pistol at a range of 8-20 feet and the enemy would fail to perish. Hitboxes are notoriously unreliable and even center-mass shotgun blasts fail to dispose of t-shirt wearing mooks. Meanwhile, a simple bonk on the head with the butt of your gun is an auto erase on an enemy. This kind of weak, flaccid, unreliable shooting play undermines the biggest draw from Hardline which is action-oriented first person shooting. That said, despite a nigh-dead multiplayer scene, dearth of mods and DLCs and a brief sub-10 hour campaign, Hardline is still capable of providing a good time, especially at its sale price of $6 USD. That's cheaper than modern movies, most of which suck quite hardily, anyways. Hardline can offer a few hours of Miami Vice fun for those that are fans of the genre. Worth a look. 7/10.